Most mating electrical connectors are mated with a push/pull action, such as in mating male and female connectors. It often is desirable to latch the connectors in mated condition to resist or prevent unmating. In some applications, latching devices are designed simply to hold the connectors in mated condition but to allow the connectors to be readily unmated. In other applications, latching devices are designed to prevent unmating of the connectors unless the latching devices, themselves, are physically unlatched. In the latter applications, unlatching of the connectors can be very difficult or cumbersome because of the design of the latching devices or because of the small dimensions of the connectors which render manual manipulation very difficult. In fact, some latching/unlatching mechanisms require a user to physically hold a connector with one hand while unlatching the latch mechanism(s) with the other hand.
There are a wide variety of latching systems for electrical connectors. Many such systems utilize flexible or resilient latch arms, cam latches on flexible walls of a connector, or the like, all of which operate on a sort of resilient snap-lock action. In other words, a pair of electrical connectors will be automatically latched upon mating, and the latching device therefore must be unlatched or released in order to unmate the connectors. If a latching device snaps into a latched position upon mating of the connectors, the latching device must be moved out of its latched condition before the connectors can be unmated. Problems constantly are encountered in effecting unlatching and unmating of the connectors because of unnecessary manual manipulations required.
Latching mechanisms also are prone to cause other problems in the design of electrical connectors. For instance, latching devices often create projections which interfere with or trap extraneous objects, such as electrical wires. Latch arms often are prone to breakage, because the arms often are integrally molded with an electrical connector housing.
This invention is directed to a latchable electrical connector system which solves the above and other problems in many previous latching devices by affording a simple one-hand unlatching action in a mechanism which prevents entanglement of the latching devices with wires or other extraneous objects and which is not prone to breakage.